Oh, no. Selling snake oil in a health studies program is TOTALLY okay!!!! Guys, don’t worry: this dandelion tincture will cure your hep C in a flash. (And if it doesn’t, we have cod liver oils, stinkweed tisanes, and the cure-all of cure-alls: boiled hog tits!)

Of course, if this hadn’t been taught by the dean’s wife, maybe they would have decided otherwise.

TORONTO — A University of Toronto investigation into a course that taught anti-vaccination materials has concluded the instructor’s approach did not warrant concern.

But the three-page report, by the former head of Public Health Ontario, acknowledges the course could have been stronger if it relied more on scientific studies.

Dr. Vivek Goel, who is now the university’s vice-president for research and innovation, was asked to look into the course after a number of expert groups as well as professors at the university complained about it.

Alternative Health: Practice and Theory was a fourth year course in a health studies program offered at the university’s Scarborough campus.

The course was taught by homeopath Beth Landau-Halpern, who is also the wife of the Scarborough campus dean Rick Halpern.

Landau-Halpern espouses the use of nosodes, controversial products sometimes called homeopathic vaccines.

Wah wah wah. Always bad when the comments are more reasonable than the reporters.

A few further thoughts for the individual reporters:

* Dude, if you normally eat 3000 calories, of which 50% are meat-based protein, you are eating 1500 calories of meat a day. A single serving of meat is, on average, under 200 calories and about a quarter-pound (maybe the problem with these reporters is that they didn’t understand ounces?). So let’s do the math: 1500/200 = 7.5 servings of 0.25 lbs = 1.75 POUNDS of meat per day. You are killing the environment, and wow you must stink.

To those of you who think heavy meat-eaters don’t smell bad: sorry, you do. Eating meat once a day or even 8-10 servings a week isn’t a problem. Eating 8-10 servings per diem? No, you smell.

* Lady, if you normally use a food scale, it’s off-limits to complain about using a food scale. Also, the commenter who said “it’s a GUIDE” clearly got it. You want hot sauce? Eat your damn hot sauce! The guide says “limit”, not “shun”. Same with coffee. Same with beer. Have a pint. Don’t play pong.

Seriously, people like you discourage those with unhealthy diets from trying to eat better. Because you reinforce the idea that eating healthy is so hard boohoowaaaaah. It’s really not. Why don’t you find some real news?

WATCH ABOVE: Canada’s Food Guide. For most, it’s that colourful poster many of us remember hanging on our grade school walls. But the Food Guide is also the country’s model for proper eating. So how practical is it?

We put two reporters, James Armstrong and Heather Loney, to the test: eat nothing but the foods from Canada’s Food Guide for one week. This is what happened.

James

I spent the last five days living by the servings standards set out by Health Canada in the Canada Food Guide.

For those wondering, the Food Guide recommends eight servings of grain, three servings of “meats and alternatives” (think peanut butter, eggs, fish), two servings of milk, and eight servings of fruits and vegetables.

The change in diet was huge for me. I usually try and eat 3,000 calories a day, the Food Guide kept me around 2,000. My diet is usually made…

WATCH ABOVE: A warning is going out to wearers of skinny jeans – avoid prolonged periods of squatting. Doctors in Australia report that a 35-year-old woman was hospitalized for four days after experiencing muscle damage, swelling, and nerve blockages in her legs after squatting for several hours while wearing tight-fitting denims.

Her calves ballooned, her skinny jeans had to be cut off of her body and she spent four days in hospital. In a new study documenting the dramatic incident, Australian doctors are warning women about damaging nerve and muscle fibres in their legs from wearing tight-fitting pants.

A 35-year-old Australian woman couldn’t move her ankles or toes and lost feeling in her lower legs and feet after squatting in her skinny jeans, according to scientists out of the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia. She was helping a family member move homes, and was squatting for hours while emptying out cupboards.

Oh the hypocrisy … of two carnivores getting angry over “non-approved” meat.
Look, I wouldn’t eat a dog. But I also don’t eat cows, sheep, poultry, or fish. I don’t judge meat-eaters for their choices. They shouldn’t judge each other, either. After all, which is worse: eating dog once a year, or eating the literally millions of cows consumed in the standard American diet?

ABOVE: Humane Society video shows live being sold at markets during China’s Yulin Dog Meat Festival

Activists from the Humane Society International have filmed what they claim are live dogs for sale on Monday at a market in southern China during the annual Yulin Dog Meat Festival.

The Yulin government distanced itself from the festival and announced new restrictions, but eateries reached by telephone reported brisk business during the event ostensibly held to mark the summer solstice.

Restaurant owners say eating dog meat is traditional during the summer, while animal rights activists say the festival has no cultural value and was merely invented to drum up business.

It is well known that eating disorders often develop in the less-structured environment of a residential campus. Even if that were not a concern, over 90% — yes, that means almost all — of women have dieted or tried to lose weight while getting their bachelor’s degrees. (And before any troll starts the fat jokes, half of these women are normal weight.) So WHY IN THE WORLD would a social media campaign take aim at this vulnerable population? (Never mind that actual results were less stellar than reported.)

Here is a “get active” to “teenage girl” translation, in case you don’t know any teenage girls:

take 10,000 steps a day –> walk faster, fatso!

have you exercised today? –> I can’t believe you’re so lazy.

Eat clean! –> OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU ATE ONE SQUARE OF CHOCOLATE YOU ARE SO GROSS

Healthy, right? Isn’t that JUST the message you’d want your daughter/sister/wife/friend/etc. to hear … from her school???

HECQO, a government-funded intermediary between the province and universities, published a thinkpiece on how intermediaries between governments and universities are essential, even when said intermediaries are funded by the state.

Yes, they did just devote months of research to justifying their own existence. And yes, there is already a ministry full of mandarins dedicated to determining educational quality at the postsecondary level (and a second one for k-12) … not to mention institution-level determinants of quality, such as external and internal review.

Yeah, the reason why the university is in crisis is totally because there aren’t enough watchdogs. < /sarcasm >

(Side note: sadly, I don’t think this story was an April Fool’s joke.)

I don’t care that it tries to communicate complex mathematical theories (I admit that comics — aren’t we supposed to call them “graphic novels” now? — can be complex. I’ve read Maus). The point is that it’s not academic. It does not have footnotes. It does not contain references. I can’t believe this qualified as a doctoral thesis outside of an Arts school.

(Well, wait. The author was at Teacher’s College. That actually explains a LOT — just look at OISE‘s record.)

It’s pretty pathetic when a university press publishes a low-tier pop culture book masquerading as an academic work (and it’s low-tier because I suspect it’s not going to sell a lot of copies). Maybe I’m a snob (okay, I’m definitely a snob). But everyone involved in this decision — creator who wrote a comic instead of a thesis, supervisor who let it pass, editor who commissioned and approved it, and Press as a whole — should be ashamed of themselves. Way to open the gates to the barbarian hordes, guys.

Economic uncertainty has taken its toll in Moscow, where Vladimir Putin has slashed salaries of top officials (including his own) by 10%. According to CNN, this puts the Russian leader’s pay at $61,000 (US) per year.

This sounds pretty reasonable to me. Any takers from the Sunshine List? (Come on guys — can’t be outdone by a Russian! Think of it as a new Space Race — we KNOW you’re old enough to remember the first one…)

Unfortunately for him, “academic culture” is a proxy for social class. (And isn’t this especially apparent when, in addition to teaching dead white men like Shakespeare, you are also the golf coach? Is there any waspier sport than golf? Racquetball? POLO???)

I am, however, concerned about the general culture at public schools—at least at the ones I’ve seen—of disengagement and compulsory learning. So when it comes to my daughter, I opt to invest a little more—to ensure she’s immersed in a community where it’s acceptable, and even admirable, to show natural enthusiasm for knowledge…

Well, we all remember how nerds were treated in public school, right?

(if you’re a guy)

(if you’re a girl)

Yet somehow, in some way, they did manage to survive, make it through, prosper, and even go to graduate school (I won’t say that they became part of the 1%, because we all know that smart 1%ers went to private school — and isn’t that part of the problem???).

By limiting his daughter’s education to her socioeconomic peers, Godsey is trapping her in a circle of her own class. That insularity blocks her from the recognition that there are actually people out there who don’t think it’s cool to read Kant or Dostoyevsky, who like sports like wrestling, and who watch NASCAR — and that those people are still good people. Thanks to educational gerrymandering, not all public schools will teach you that, either — but it is the ideal, as he might have learned from a classic high school movie:

We all have things we can learn from each other.

The article ends up with a plea that one person doesn’t matter in the face of chronic underfunding (or maybe misdirection of funding) and a “lifetime” of support.

Public schools have my tax money, my lifelong employment, and almost anything else they need of me; pulling my daughter—one student—out of the system is probably the least of its worries. And on a more abstract level, the above criticisms fail to acknowledge the cumbersome, almost fixed nature of the dominant culture I’ve seen at public schools—one that occasionally isolates students who love learning, are teased by the “cool” kids and even bullied into joining the masses. No matter how much she voluntarily recites Shakespeare, the student I envision my daughter becoming would never be able to single-handedly transform a public school into an environment that is cool to learning.

But what if everyone thought this way? Doesn’t everyone think this way — especially those who have a choice?

Hyprocrite auteur, public schools have your white guilt. If they had your belief, commitment, or good faith, they would also have your daughter.